


Came Down Too Soon

by Wirrrn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Lycanthropy and related Injuries, M/M, Mild Language, Toilet Seats Left Up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2642207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Returned from London, Jackson has shed the Kanima like a skin. His feelings for Derek, however, are less easily denied. Meanwhile, someone moves against Derek, and it's up to Jackson to save the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 **CAME DOWN TOO SOON** ****  
by  
Wirrrn ****  


"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls"  
-George Carlin

 

“I feel the Wolf in me. He is hot where I am cold; He is hungry where I am sated”

-WEREWOLF: THE SERIES (1987)

 

"In the night, something begins to howl. It is the werewolf, and there is no more reason for it to be coming now than there would be for a spike in cancer cases, or a murderer rampaging through town, or a tornado touching down. The why does not matter. The time of the werewolf is now.”

-Stephen King, CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF

 

“What is a dog  
but a wolf with delusions of civility?”

-Gordon Grice  
_    _   _   _  

 

 

  
 _[...Jackson...]_  
   
-A thought emerging on the edge of awareness, buzzing in the area around his sleeping head like a persistent, bothersome mosquito.  


  
                         _[...Jackson...]_  
  
-He twitches irritably, bumps freckled nose with sleep-weighted hand, as if something

(Dry and scaled liked the shucked skin of a reptile)

Tickles its way down his cheeks  
  
                                                                                                          _[...Jackson...]_  
  
-He frowns, fleetingly, the expression dipping skittish feet into the muscles of his face and then scuttling away under his pillow. Someone’s face floats through his dreaming mind. Someone he knows, somewhat, but would wish to know a lot more of. There is a charge in the air between them whenever they meet, some strand as yet ill-defined, but tugging on them both. He tries to hide it, they both do, but without much success. It is one of the reasons Lydia has dumped him  
  
("~Maybe you'd want to fuck me if I set my house on fire and turned up at random intervals to threaten you in a vague fashion?!")  
  
Thoughts of flames licking at timber segue into thoughts of witchfire-green eyes and a strong, square, stubbled jaw. He smiles languidly in his sleep. One of his hands finds his stomach and splays briefly before moving slowly down-  
 **  
** _[...Jackson please I...]_

  
  
-Jackson Whittemore opens his eyes to have them dazzled by light. In the space between a breath and a heartbeat, picked out and highlighted by harsh, Antarctic glare, his conscious control is wrenched aside by his reptile brain  
  
//it’s coming it’s here at last you always knew you weren’t good enough you’re useless the hour has come damaged goods they finally know how worthless you really are//  
  
then he realizes and leaps out of the path of the car moments before it pulps him with one expensive, chrome flank. He lands awkwardly and turns- mouth open to display non-existent fangs and a sibilant, voiceless hiss on his lips- blinking the purplebruiseafterimagestrobe of dazzling headlights out of his vision to see the driver of the car  
  
//...Chris Argent?//  
  
flip him off and keep going down the road, sounding two angry blasts of the horn for good measure when he has exceeded potential road rage distance.  
  
Jackson ripostes with a finger of his own -though the car has retreated enough that the gesture is probably wasted- and gingerly checks himself over for injury before wondering if it's not too late at night, if maybe he can call Danny for a ri-  
  
 Jackson freezes scarecrow stiff and stares with eyes sudden and storybook wide

  
("Here you will find another dog, with eyes as big as mill-wheels, but do not let that trouble you")  
  
A moment ago, he had been in his bed, limbs akimbo, pleasantly warm and dreaming of something  
  
//someone//  
  
he couldn't quite recall. Now he is standing, wearing nothing but his favourite pair of sleep-pants, on a verge of coarse grass beside a major road.  


"What. The. Fuck?!"  
  
Blinking owlishly,

  
(lizardly)

Jackson takes in his surroundings. It is the work of moments to realize he is at the school. Which is not possible, barring some kind of teleportation event or alien abduction  
  
//like my life's not weird enough already//  
  
Jackson runs a hand over his pale, bare chest. A light dewing of perspiration coats his entire torso, which is, he notices, taking deeper and quicker breaths than he usually does. His calves ache, not unpleasantly. Turning up one of his feet now and grasping it in his hands. The sole is dirty and wet, as are the lower legs of his sleep pants, with grass, loose gravel, mud and other nocturnal detritus, including the shattered, calciform whorl of a crushed snail-shell.  
  
Bizarre as it is, he seems to have been -sleep-walking, he supposes- for six entire blocks without realizing, without waking up and without hitting any obstacles.  
  
He walks over to the well-lit region to his left. He has come back to himself right next to the Lacrosse field, and the huge klieg lights on their wheeled trolley rig, blasting squares of squint-making brightness onto the neatly cut grass are a familiarity to him in this headlong voyage through the looking glass.  
  
A gleam from one side and he turns to the small visitor car-park beside the field. One single car is parked there, black and shiny on the tarmac as an oil slick on a stormy sea; a Corvette that looks like it costs more than the entire budget allocated the school in a year.  
  
//Derek Hale//  
  
Jackson's legs are moving towards the car even before he has stopped cradling his foot and returned it to the ground. He stumble-skips across the asphalt for the first few paces, musing darkly that he's just as awkward and befuddled around the vehicle as he is around its owner. This is a behaviour he is determined to change.

Things had been... calmer... in London, but he’d felt like a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces lost under a sofa cushion somewhere. It had taken him a year of studying to give him some bargaining room, then the better part of a week to convince his parents that he’d be fine on his own back in Beaconsfield, but the moment the plane touched down back on his native soil, he felt better than he had in his whole year abroad. Especially when Derek had been the one to pick him up from the airport, in this self-same car.  
  
(Derek had actually hugged him and growled a ‘welcome home’; that had Jackson grinning delightedly more than Danny finally nabbing a boyfriend)  
  
Jackson shakes his head loose of the sticky strands of memory as he draws level with Derek’s car.

Peering in the driver's side window, he takes stock of several things:  
  
A] There is no-one in the car.  
  
(Thoughtflash: _Derek climbing out from the driver's side door, long limbs arching, the merest shadow of a smile haunting those kissable lips as he turns and sees Jackson approaching)_  
  
B] The windshield in front of the driver's seat is cobwebbed with a net of jagged cracks, and the spider at its centre is a small, disturbingly antiseptic looking hole.  
  
(Thoughtflash: _Derek's eyes go wide in the split second before Chris Argent fires the silver bullet through the windshield at point blank range; blood, skull shrapnel and thinking meat burst all over the rear of the car like wet fireworks)_  
  
//No, that can't be right, there's no blood anywhere in the car// __  
  
_(a tranquillizer dart breaks through the windshield and finds Derek's neck;”Jac...Jackso.." he mutters as he drops forward, Argent's gloved hand sliding between the wheel and the wolf so that the horn does not go off)_  
  
How could a dart break a windshield? And surely a wolf as strong as Derek could have shrugged off a tranq; even if only long enough to show Argent’s facial musculature how easily it could be peeled away from his skull?

 __  
(Derek snarls in outraged agony as Argent punches through the window and activates the taser with the same motion; _arcs of  painful lightning dance between the fillings of his teeth and the sharp smell of ozone fills the car; he manages to claw Argent, badly, but then everything blurs and darkens_ )  
  
C] The driver's side door is unlocked.  
  
( _Holding his bleeding shoulder, Derek fumbles at the door lock with fingers gone stroke- heavy and numb_ )  
  
D] The passenger's side door is ajar.  
  
( _Argent and perhaps some faceless goon break into the car and drag the semi-conscious werewolf out, loading him into a waiting van_ )  
  
E] Strange black marks like slug-trails are standing out on the fawn-coloured material of the passenger seat  
  
( _Derek's boots leaving scuff marks of rubber on the upholstery as he is dragged bleeding from the car_ )  
  
//No//  
  
"No!"  
  
Jackson turns from the silent car and looks about him. It is a matter of moments before he thinks of the road, the headlights and the horn.  
  
//Shit. Argent! He probably had Derek in the trunk when he tried to make me into road pizza!//  
  
Before the panic has even started to school his face into a Noh mask, Jackson is already jogging down the road, Smartphone in hand and halfway through Danny's number.  
  
//Wait//  
  
something stops him.  He pockets the phone, jogs back to the car park.  
  
Derek is not dead, nor is he with Chris Argent. He is here, somewhere. Alive. Hurt, probably. In imminent danger without help, definitely. But...

_//Here//_

_//He’s **here** //_

Argent doesn’t have him, yet.

Derek is Here.

  
  
Jackson has no idea how he knows this is true. He just

**_KNOWS_ **

the same way he breathes without consciously moving his lungs, how without volition he keeps the red, wet organ in his chest pumping blood around his body, how his eyelids blink over the grey orbs he wishes were looking on the enigmatic  alpha werewolf  this very moment.

  
Derek Hale is his muscle-memory.  
  
Those self-same eyes fluttering closed; Jackson runs a hand across the dolphin sleek curves of the Corvette. When his fingers slide over the hood, they find metal still noticeably warm to the touch, which, oddly, makes him feel momentarily like climbing atop the hood and basking in the warmth, like some kind of snake

(Lizard)

 He shakes the bizarre whim free of his skull.

  
  
//There's still time//  
  
  
  


...To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

  
Jackson runs into the middle of the field, trying to look in all directions at once. Where? He'd be near- Argent hadn't time to stow him anywhere far before Jackson had shown up. He won't have put Derek out in the open; there are always people on the school grounds, even outside class hours. But he'd want to keep him somewhere which discouraged escape.  
  
Quick glance towards the bleachers. Empty.   
  
The equipment shed? It was no bigger than a large outhouse, but like an outhouse, it attracted unwelcome tenants. The equipment shed has been an unofficial Black Widow sanctuary for as long as Jackson remembered. Fumigation just pissed them off, and three exterminators had disappeared. Now Coach kept the Lacrosse sticks, pucks and things in the derelict school bus.

  
The locker rooms!

 

 They seemed the most likely possibility. Secluded, unlikely to warrant investigation by anyone who didn't want to be labelled a sex offender, and sound-proofed.

  
As soon as he enters the tiled white cube of the men's change-room, he knows he's in the right place. The lights are on, there is the sound of water running and the strange sense tugging at his mind, at his limbs, increases the moment he steps through the door  
  
//derekderekderek **DEREKDEREKDEREKDEREK** //  
  
He has time to think that it sounds as though there's an awful lot of water running, that perhaps there's been a plumbing leak or something, before he rounds the corner leading to the showers and the wolf inside him, nascent and skittish, still just a cub really, leaps into the bones of his face with an outraged roar, wanting to rend something apart in its teeth.

 

(Something else uncoils and rattles a dry warning in his gut; something scaled and cold and venomous)

  
  
The heat coming from the showers hits the cold night air coming in from outside and creates a thick miasma of roiling fog; humid, cloying and fish-belly white, like the reaching hyphae of graveyard fungi cracking open a coffin.  The thick clouds of steam pass around Jackson as he moves forward

 

-and hang like a curtain either side of the man slumped, cruciform, before him.  
  
Derek Hale, fully clothed, is tied by his arms between the metal piping of two showers turned on full blast. The water pressure has made the pipes raise in short, brutal arcs, and Derek is suspended a half foot or so off the ground. Jets of scalding water from both shower heads blast the unconscious man full in the face, and the water that flows down his body to pool at the drain beneath his feet is shot through with ribbons of dark red blood from the arrows that pierce his flesh, pinning him to the wall in several places.  
  
Both the gushing water and the arrows gleam. The water refracts in a light carmine colour, diluted as it is with Derek's blood.  
  
The arrows, however, shine silver.  
  
Jackson is across the room in seconds. He struggles not to panic as he turns the showers off, not feeling it or caring when he scalds himself under the spray.  The water pressure dwindles to nothing and Derek's sodden body slides down the tiled wall several inches, Jackson’s arms around him all the way, until his Alpha’s feet touch the floor.   
  
"Derek?" Jackson's quiet voice is a booming klaxon in the cloying, humid fog of the silent room.

 

He won’t cry.

 

He _WON’T._

 "...Derek? Please don't be dead; don’t you fucking DARE be dead, you hear me?"  
  
The reddened tissue of Derek's face is dulling to his normal flesh tone and the blisters are fading into nothing, even before his eyes stutter open and he spits a mouthful of hot water down his front. Jackson feels relief pulling at the muscles of his arms like a puppeteer. He embraces the other man, gingerly, avoiding the arrows as best he can as he holds Derek, just hugs him, tightly, whilst Derek wakes up completely.

 

“-Jackson? Why are you... wait, are you really here? Been hallucinating... for a while. Too much... too much silver in my system.”  
  
Derek moans softly

\- not entirely from pain-

as Jackson places his hands gently on the werewolf’s soaked chest. “I’m real, Derek. I’m here. I’m going to help you.” He moves a finger cautiously to one of the arrows, gently slides a finger along the shaft.

 

Neither man is surprised when there is a quiet sizzle and Jackson snatches back a small first degree burn on the pad of his finger.   
  
“Looks like that bite and clawing you gave me is still working its mojo.”  
  
 He returns his hands to the arrow, setting his jaw squarely as he breaks the fletchings

 

(which are, fortunately, plastic)

 

from the rear of the spine, breaks the arrow in half, and pulls both halves from Derek’s body. When his palms return to Derek’s chest, they are criss-crossed with welts.  
  
Derek winces, taking Jackson’s hands in his own. “-Jacks. You don’t have to-“  
  
Jackson cuts him off by placing one of his fingers to the older man’s lips. “Yeah, I do, Derek; I really do.” He smiles. “Only four more, right? You’re lucky the bastard wasn’t a good shot!”  
  
“-They missed... missed the vital areas on purpose. Only wanted to keep me here... gone back for some ‘experimental anti-lycanthropy’ weapons back at the arsenal. Back... They’ll be back soon. We don’t have much time.”

 

“Okay. So we’re on the Clock.” Jackson tears some paper towels off of the wall dispenser and wraps them around his hands as best he can. “...I won’t lie to you, Derek. This is going to hurt you like a motherfucker.”

 

The older man nods. “-Talk to me, Jacks... It helps me to...hear you. What are you doing here? I mean, how did you know to come?”

  
“Oh yeah. Ummm... I had a sort of dream kinda thing. And I guess I sleepwalked, because I kinda... woke up here, thinking about you.”

 

As he speaks, Jackson is working at the fletchings on the second of the arrows, at Derek’s right shoulder. His face is very close; the older man can see the blush that spreads over his cheeks, throwing his freckles into stark relief.

 

Despite his pain, Derek is interested. “-I Howled you?”  
  
“You did the what now?”

 

The second arrow slips free, Derek’s entire body going rigid for a moment before relaxing. Somewhat. 

 

“-Howling. Regular wolves howl across distances so their pack mates and rivals can hear where they are.”  
  
“I know that; David Attenborough gave me and dad a personal tour around the British Natural History Museum”.  This earns him a smile from the older man.   
  
//Damn, Derek’s fucking _beautiful_ when he smiles; he should do it more often. //  
  
Jackson blushes again. Derek, to his credit, simply keeps talking.  
  
“-Werewolves can howl with our voices too, of course, but we can also use our ability to sense and influence emotion to broadcast emotion over a distance, to another werewolf. I opened myself up and Howled Scott- sent him all my pain and fear and need. I felt him receive it, but he didn’t understand, didn’t realize it was me asking him for help. He just took a couple of Advil and went to sleep!”  Derek shakes his head ruefully, and then winces. “But I didn’t Howl you, Jacks; I don’t know how you ended up getting it.”  
  
Jackson, working the third arrow out of Derek’s lower leg, rolls his eyes. “Well my house isn’t too far from McCall’s; maybe your Howl bounced off his thick skull and came to me.”

 

Derek is about to reply when his eyes suddenly go wide and veer in the direction of the door. “-They’re back.”  
  
  
...to be continued!  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil Cliffhanger. DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNNH!
> 
> Next part should be up soonish. Keep up the feedback, it helps to know I'm not writing into a vacuum. Nice to see so many other people who like Derek/Jackson too!


	3. Chapter 3

  
Jackson looks up from his assessment of the final arrow wound. “Hunters?”  
  
Derek nods. “I can hear the car coming down the road again. They’ll be here soon.”  
  
“How long have we got?”  
  
“Maybe two minutes? Three, max.”  
  
“Okay.” Jackson takes a deep breath, and looks Derek in the eye. “There’s just one arrow left in you. But we have a problem. It’s lodged between two of your ribs, and it’s embedded into the wall behind you.”  
  
“-Leave me.”  
  
“Not an option.”  
  
“-Jacks, please, I-”

 _“NOT_ an option, Derek.”

Jackson crossed to his locker and bashed it open. No time to change out of his sleep pants, but he grabbed a small pile of spare clothes anyway. Pulling a wallet out from a pants pocket, Jackson removes money (mostly American paper, but with several British coins shuffled in), two credits cards, his driver’s license and several foil-wrapped discs  
  
(a blush flames over his cheeks and nose again)  
  
and shoves them into the pockets of his spare jeans and a letterman jacket, then shuts the locker again as quickly as possible. (the locker door barely clinging to its hinges now) . He turns back to the arrow, pulling at it experimentally. Derek hisses softly.  
  
“Okay Derek; no time for bedside manner. We’re going to have to rip this out. I’ll pull; you push, as hard as you can. There’s going to be a lot of pain. I’m sorry. I need for you to stay conscious, okay? Try not to pass out. And bite down on this.”

Jackson puts his now empty leather wallet in Derek’s mouth. The werewolf, somewhat nonplussed, takes it between his teeth

Jackson nods at him, attempts a smile. “Keep your eyes on mine, okay? I’m here for you. On three?”

Derek “Mmmhmmphs” around the wallet.

“One... Two... _Three_!”

Three loud cracks- one from the wall, two from Derek’s body. A muffled roar of agony, quickly unstifled as Derek bites _through_ Jackson’s wallet.  Two squares of obscenely expensive Florentine leather clatter to the floor, looking like strange leaves floating in the sudden red pool on the tile.

-Jackson fights to keep Derek upright as the agonized werewolf slumps against him with all his weight, his flank slick and red and open. The broken silver arrow, thrown to the floor, is kicked aside by the two men as they lurch-dance around the shower area, and spins across the tiled floor to hit the far wall with a dull

_CLACK!_

“I’m sorry, Derek” Jackson feels rage at himself. The pain on the older man’s face is great, and yet Jackson himself can do nothing but mutter useless platitudes. “I’m so sorry. I should have come up with a better plan.”

Derek shakes his head and roars. “-NO!” he swallows, gulps air hugely and tries again, more quietly. “No, Jacks, you did fine. I’ll be... fine too. I just... we need to go.”

“Okay”. Moving over to the benches, Jackson grabs two large towels and presses them against Derek’s side, moving the older man’s hand over them.

“We need to stop the bleeding, and stop you leaving a blood trail they can follow”.

 Derek nods and presses them against the wound in his side, snarls soundlessly as pain takes another exploratory bite out of him, moves to the door. He sniffs and stiffens.  
  
“-Fuck, they’re coming. They’re going to cut us off.”

Jackson takes Derek’s free arm, guides him back behind the showers. “Emergency exit.  Unless you’re here all the time, on the team or something, you have to hunt for it- the Coke machine totally hides it until you’re right on top of it. I know they’ll miss it for a while- it’ll buy us some time.”

The pair makes their way through the steam to the back of the room, past wooden benches and long metal shelves which in the fog and the dark look uncomfortably like morgue lockers. They reach the fire exit, which is indeed camouflaged by a large soda machine on one side of it and a snack machine on the other. Jackson gently leans Derek against the snack machine and opens the fire door, then takes Derek’s free arm over his shoulder again. As they pass through the door, Derek stops Jackson with a hushed “wait”. The older werewolf swallows, tightens his jaw, and uses his free hand to grab the Coke fridge and drag it several inches across the floor so that it partially blocks the exit. A new maroon stain blooms on the towel pressed to his side. Jackson looks upset, but Derek gives him a tight smile, and they make their way into the quiet, echoing darkness of the dormant school beyond.

Halfway down their third darkened corridor, Derek stumbles and nearly brings both himself and Jackson down. The younger man yelps and grabs at Derek, propping him against the nearest wall.

Derek pushes off of it, gently batting away Jackson’s hands. “-I’m okay; we need to keep going.”

“No, we need to find a hiding spot for a while; we need to get you somewhere you can rest and heal.” Jackson suddenly starts. “...the Biology labs! Come on!”

Jackson leads the older man past several doors and corridors veering away into black labyrinths; warm, darkened throats with doored maws that could conceal anything.  Finally he stops before a sturdy steel door, with a glass window in its centre, reinforced with wire mesh build into the glass.

Derek regards the door dubiously. “-Well it does look eminently defendable; it also looks eminently locked.”

“Yeah, but the Science Fair is coming up in three weeks; Dr. Slawter told the top 2 % of the class where the spare classroom key is kept, in case we wanted to come in and work on our projects after hours.”

“-Oh.” A brief pause. “What’s your project about?”

Jackson’s cheeks flame again. “Gila Monsters, Komodo Dragon and other lizards with venom; Write what you know, yeah?”

Derek raises an eyebrow and then smiles. Jackson smiles back, hesitantly, and then crosses to an alcove further down the hall where the emergency fire equipment is stored. Pulling out the crimson cylinder of the fire extinguisher, he inverts it and removes a small access card that is taped to the underside of the extinguisher’s base.

He returns to Derek’s side and unlocks the classroom. The two men slip into the lab as quietly as they can. Jackson turns the lights on long enough to re-lock the door and pocket the E-key, then returns the room to blackness.

Even wounded, Derek can of course, see perfectly well in the near total dark, but he still lets Jackson guide him to the back of the darkened classroom, weaving through several laminate surfaced, long desks topped by Bunsen burners, tubing and some sinks. He may also lean on the younger man more than is strictly necessary.

Jackson halts by the desk right at the back of the room, closest to the wall.

“These desks all have storage space inside them, but the doors are flush; if you weren’t a student, you’d probably not realize they have drawers inside them.” He slides the door open. “There’s no equipment in these back ones; there’s easily room for us both in here. C’mon!”

Sliding the partition back, Jackson slips inside and then reaches out to Derek, helping him into the small crawl space alongside him. The two men end up lying beside each other, touching all along one side of their bodies. Jackson is grateful for the semi-darkness, as he can feel his face burning his freckles into relief again.

Derek reaches out a hand, strokes Jackson’s cheek. “-Jacks; thank you. You’ve been a great deal of help to me; You did good here, tonight.”

Jackson can’t help the smile that plucks at his full lips. However, Derek’s next words make it slide from his mouth to die somewhere on the floor in the dusty blackness around them. “-But now I need you to go.”

“What?”

“-No, not in a bad... I... I don’t mean to devalue...  You’ve already done so much; you’ve saved my life at least twice already. But the Hunters...” the werewolf huffs in exasperation with his clumsy words. “-They don’t know about you, Jacks. They don’t know you’re here now, they don’t know you’re helping me, and they sure as fuck don’t know that I marked you with my talons and started you on the pathway to lycanthropy. They only want me. You could leave now, go back home and they wouldn’t stop you, wouldn’t see you as a target.”

  
“...And then come to school tomorrow and hear with everyone else how that weirdo loner Derek Hale died in an unfortunate ‘accident’ on school property overnight? Or worse, just never hear anything from you ever again? Fuck. That.” 

Jackson’s freckles stand out even more when he is indignant than when he is embarrassed.

“I’m not leaving you, Derek.  I don’t care what _anyone_ thinks or doesn’t think, not anymore. Least of all the Hunters. I don’t care whether helping makes me a target. I care about _you_ , and I’m staying right here until I’m sure you’re safe, so can your Alpha  bullshit! Go on, growl at me- pull that scary “Grrr” face you like so much! Not right now? Okay, then shut up, lie down and start healing already!”  
  
Derek is simultaneously stunned, touched and impressed. He settles for smiling, almost shyly, in a  manner that sends Jackson’s thoughts tumbling into his pants, and resting his great, dark head on the slimmer man’s shoulder. “-Okay, Jacks. Okay”

He sighs at the other man

// _Mate_ // the wolf growls from inside his skullcage // _he is our Mate_ //

 ...To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

* * * *

Derek is standing in the foyer of the zoo’s reptile house, trying not to let either the heat or humidity

(both 10 degrees higher than outside)

Or the funk of reptiles

\- dry, rank and somehow old-

Bother him as he waits for his boyfriend to return from the concession stand. He lets his gaze idly flick over the binomial names under each cage

(Heloderma suspectum; Heloderma horridum; Varaneus komodoensis; Chlamydiosaurus kingii)

and the bored- looking, unblinking animals therein.

The Gila monster flicks out a long, black-taper tongue at him. He flinches, instinctively, expecting a spray of venom across the glass at his eye level. The Gila gives him a disgusted look, rolls its head and goes to sleep under a heat lamp.

“-Hey babe!”

Derek turns, a huge grin on his face at the sound of his lover’s voice. Jackson puts one arm around him- the other is loaded down with ice-cream cones.

Jackson smiles apologetically, indicating the cones. “-They were all out of Pronghorn, and the Hare and Groundhog was too frozen to scoop, so I got you Elk”.

“Nice!” Derek sinks his teeth into the blood red, frozen sworls as his boyfriend pulls out his latest, state-of-the-art and extremely expensive Android and takes a photo of the pair of them, the flash a wash of white across the world as-

* * * *

 

-Derek shuddered along the length of his body and came awake. He was immediately aware of arms around him, restraining him and would have fought, save for the scent that he immediately recognized, consciously and on an almost cellular level

//Warmth. Safety. Affection. //

//Desire//

Jackson’s voice now, very close- practically in his head. “-Easy, Derek, easy. I’ve got you. You were dreaming.”

Derek blinked, owlishly. “How long was I out?”

“-Only about a half hour. I’d have woken you, but you looked so adorkable I didn’t have the heart. Anyway, you were healing.”

Indeed, the scalds and arrow wounds all over Derek’s arms and torso had completely disappeared.

Derek reached out with his now fully healed hand and gently stroked the sharp plane of one of Jackson’s cheeks. Jackson shivered and Derek frowned, slightly, taking in the other man's distinct dearth of clothing.

"You're cold; You should have gotten dressed in the locker room."

An answering frown from Jackson. "-Yes mother; We were a little pressed for time, remember? Anyway, these are _designer_ sleep pants."

Both men try to glare at each other for as long as they can, but swiftly crack up.

Derek pulls Jackson into his arms, noting with satisfaction that the teen's bare torso quickly loses the goosebumps it had affected.

A rush of warmth goes through him, too. He smiled at the younger man.

“Thank you, Jacks.”

In the dim light filtering through from the lab outside, Jackson looks surprised and then, tentatively, pleased. “-for what?”

“For coming back from London.”

“-I had to. There was nothing there for me. And being apart from you, it actually hurt. I mean, Physically. I’m guessing that was some kind of wolfpack thing?”

A nod. “Amongst those wolves who are or who will be very... close... yeah. It was a good idea of Danny to set up a Skype thing for us both. It helped.”

“-Yeah, but once a week wasn’t nearly enough. I needed to be around you. Took me _far_   too long to convince my parents of that though. And that you weren’t some weird cult leader trying to brainwash me.”

“They really thought that?”

“-They really did.” Jackson grinned as the older man snorted. “-Eventually I had to phase in front of them. Then they realized that “werewolf” wasn’t street code for some new kind of heroin. I was on the next plane back.”

"The look on your face...”

Jackson blushes, remembering the older man picking him up at the airport, the hug they’d exchanged. Remembering his huge eyes and dropped open mouth. Stilinski had soon aped the expression when Derek had led Jackson back into the lair- arms around Jackson's shoulder, beaming- much to Jackson’s smug delight.

A scrape from outside the desk they are holed up in causes both men to tense, until they see the pointed muzzle of a rat outside, sniffing at the gap between the wood.

Jackson cocks his head in the general direction of the door. “-Do you think they’ve given up?”

“Unlikely. They know I’m here somewhere, know there’ll be serious repercussions from all sides if what they’ve done gets out. They won’t stop now.”

Jackson nods, settling closer to the other man. “-Then we stay here a little longer.”

...Derek’s answering smile goes suddenly slack, and then returns as a grimace. His whole body arcs as he claws- literally and figuratively- at his upper back.

“Oww! Owow ow and **_SHIT_**!

Jackson is pulling at the other man’s damp, blood-encrusted shirt almost before he realizes it and is stunned to see a small section of skin between Derek’s shoulder blades massively, angrily inflamed and pulsing with an intermittent light just beneath the skin.

“-What. The actual. _Fuck_?!”

Derek barks in pain. “Transmitter. Must have been put in when I was unconscious. Get it out!”

Jackson bites down on the panic and the tears that threaten to come and forces his hand to reform into a taloned-tipped paw. The claws snick together as the younger wolf hesitates. He really doesn’t want to hurt Derek.

“They’ll be coming”. A ragged gasp. “...Just...just do it.”

That decides him. He won’t see Derek strung up and helpless ever again. No sir. Not this man.

A quick downward slash of surgically swift talons and the transmitter lies bloody and beeping in his hand like an improbable frog.

Derek snatches the thing from Jackson’s once-again-human hand

(the electricity passing through them at the touch has nothing to do with the device)

And crushes it to metallic dust against the side of their hiding place.

“We need to move.”

“-You think it was on long enough to pin us down?”

Almost as though waiting for Jackson’s cue, there comes the sound of running feet in the hallway outside the biology labs, the lancing whiteness of a flashlight beam banishing the concealing shadows. The classroom door rattles then, a moment later, judders in its jamb as it is hit with force.

Desperate, the men look around in the gloom. At the very back of the storage space, half hidden by Derek’s legs, is a grated vent.

“-There!”

Derek turns- with difficulty and banging painfully into Jackson several times in the process- and winkles the grating open with deft talons.

He peers into the dark hole. “It’ll be tight.”

“-Tight’s better than caught; you first.”

A look from the older man catches Jackson’s breath in his throat. Derek cups his face, briefly, and slips through the vent, quick as a

//lizard//

snake.

Jackson following a second later, trying to banish thoughts of horror movie monsters and their propensity for loitering in air vents from his mind.

...To Be Continued...

**Author's Note:**

> This came about due to me really missing Jackson on the show, especially his homoerotically charged scenes with Derek. OTP right here!
> 
> The "Big-Eyed Dog" quote used in text is from Hans Christian-Anderson's 'The Tinderbox'. The essay Jackson mentions, on Venomous Lizards, is one I actually wrote as part of my Zoology degree (no, Kanimas were not featured).


End file.
